Proposals by the Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services can succeed only if the Scottish Government radically changes the way funds are distributed, CIPFA has said.
That means dumping the traditional sectoral approach to allocation and replacing it with a funding mechanism designed around people-centred services, CIPFA’s Scottish policy and technical manager, Don Peebles, told Public Finance.
This goes beyond the call by the commission, chaired by Campbell Christie, for a review of funding to improve flexibility, coupled with stronger local partnership planning and a revamped concordat between central and local government.
Peebles acknowledged that the funding reform was a fundamental change but insisted it was essential.
‘Everyone agrees that public service reform is necessary and that planning and delivery of services should be integrated,’ he said.
‘But that is incongruent with the existing funding mechanism, which provides a third to local authorities, a third to health, a third to other bodies and only then asks people to work together,’ he added.
The Christie Commission report floated several alternative funding mechanisms, such as giving incentives to providers to improve joined-up working.
It urges ministers to explore such options but does not endorse any of them, nor does it advocate a break with sector-based allocation.
‘If we’re serious about integration of services, a revision of funding has to be part of it,’ Peebles said. ‘The challenge is to think about how to kick-start that aspect of it. It’s a huge change and we shouldn’t under-estimate the scale of the issues involved.’
CIPFA’s preference was set out in its Call to the new Scottish Government published in April during the Holyrood election campaign. It wants a holistic allocation system that budgets on the basis of locally assessed outcomes, integrated planning and collaborative delivery.
The Christie report, which was published in June, won broad support in Scotland for the menu of integrated and person-centred services, preventative spending, community involvement and deprivation targeting. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities endorsed the package in full without waiting for a ministerial response.
But the commission’s remit fell short of requiring it to say how its ideas would be implemented. It also had little to offer on structural change and ruled out early redrawing of local authority boundaries.
Peebles welcomed the report’s declaration that, in the design and delivery of services, form should follow substance. ‘It usefully sets out what has to be done – the gap lies in how to make that happen,’ he said.
